Page 86 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

The Philippines media 75
laws and the obsolete 1976 Tripoli Agreement between the Marcos government
and the MNLF (Gloria 2000).
The ASG relies primarily on violence and the threat of terror to intimidate pub-
lic opinion, and the extremity of the violence that it employs is guaranteed to
secure media attention. In an interview aired by radio station DXRZ in 2003,
ASG spokesman Abu Solaiman said the group ‘will be your worst nightmares. We
will let you feel the fear and the raging fury very deep inside us’(Mindanao Daily
Mirror 2005b). The previous year had witnessed one of its worst excesses when
footage of a soldier being beheaded was aired on prime-time newscasts. The
Standards Authority of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP),
censured the four networks involved in a strongly worded decision which read,

The grisly beheading scenes...constitute a flagrant, shocking, sickening and
insensitive display of graphic and horrifying violence which has no place on
Philippine television, or elsewhere, and can find no shield under the free
speech provision of the Constitution or respondents’ responsibility to inform
the public on news or current events. The questioned footages are utterly
offensive, absolutely dehumanizing, and completely devoid of any redeeming
quality. They are unfit for public consumption, whether primetime or otherwise,
in newscasts or other program modes.
(Chua 2003)

The four stations were deluged with complaints, showing both public repugnance
for their giving the ASG propaganda and also popular opposition to the ASG.
However the ASG’s inability to articulate any political objectives effectively
devalues these actions to the level of being gratuitous violence.
The ASG’s attempts to influence media outputs have intensified since 2001,
because the group has been on the defensive and media attention has focused on
the successes of the security forces. It attempted to re-brand itself by renaming
itself ‘Al-Rakatul Islamiah’ and claiming that it was a group of rational armed
men fighting for a legitimate cause. It also re-directed its violence and ratcheted
up the scale of its attacks. This was reflected in the bombing of Superferry 14 and
1
its alleged plans for a ‘Madrid level’ bombing in 2004. Persistent media reports
in 2004 that ASG cells had moved into Manila came amid suggestions that it
was planning to intensify attacks on civilian targets in order to show to the
government and international terrorist groups that it was still a force to reckon with
(Manila Times 2004c). Janjalani also issued a statement which claimed that the
group had an endless list of suicide bombers ready to be deployed against
undisclosed targets (Manila Times 2004a). Despite these efforts the media still
universally refers to the group as the ASG and still labels it as a bandit group.
Its inability to articulate any coherent ideological goals, coupled with its
gratuitous use of violence, has meant that the ASG’s use of the media has failed
to win it any measure of popular support among the Muslim population. Instead,
media reporting perpetuates the image of the group’s lack of popular support.
Nash Pangadapun, secretary general of Maradeka, a federation of Moro civil